GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB is much (more or less 26%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be much (more or less 80%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (80%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.